


Dreams in Technicolour

by oneinspats



Series: Boy With Apple, or, Eve in the Garden with Snake [2]
Category: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Genre: F/M, M/M, so skirting historical accuracy sort of, wes anderson version of world war II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:20:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1953051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneinspats/pseuds/oneinspats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(after Boy With Apple) </p><p>The war. Postcards. Things in-between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eastern Front, Western Wind

A postcard arrives: 

_In London. Fucking crowded. Smells like a sewer. Buildings v. ugly. Not like Lutz._

_D.D-U-T_

Gustave tucks it away in a small diary which houses his better attempts at poetry. The little pieces he spouts when inspired and wants to remember for later.

 

 

Before Dmitri left he had given Gustave _Boy with Apple_ and hadn’t cursed.

 

 

The border had closed in October in 1932. Zero remembers seeing men in black. He had once explained to Agatha that memories were like cooking. You choose which flavours to emphasise and which ones to down play. If a chilli is too spicy a chef adds a tablespoon of lime to cut it. Zero does the same. 

This war isn’t helping. It’s like chilli powder on top of two tons of pepper. No yogurt to dull the pain.

Memories are, for Gustave, a finely painted masterpiece. He chooses the colours and the position and when he regales stories he makes sure that the frame suits the moment and that the audience hears only what he wants them to hear.

 

 

On a train, between countries, Dmitri had asked about his family. Gustave had changed the subject.

 

 

Here is a selection of post cards and notes sent from a certain Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis to a certain Monsieur Gustave H of the Grand Budapest Hotel.

  1.      _Rainy. Foggy. Haven’t seen the sun in a fortnight. I hate Scotland._
  2.      _In perfume shop in York. Smells like l’air de panache only with more vanilla. If possible. Fucking hell what has become of my life. I hate you._
  3.      _This is a picture of a remnant from Hadrian’s Wall. Not impressive. Roman Aqueducts near Nebelsbad much better. Found Latin graffiti. Tried my schoolboy Latin on it. Says the following: Marcus screwed Letizia’s husband Gaius last Tuesday._
  4.      _Re: Latin Graffiti – we humans have not changed. In the Ritz in London. Found easily ten women who would suit you and your_ peculiar _tastes._
  5.      _There is a dead fruit fly in my glass of wine. Fuck my life._



Newspaper headlines in the Trans-Alpine Yodel read: _Bombings in London_. Gustave tells Zero that he wishes the paper wasn’t so depressing all of the time.

He goes up stairs, to the second floor bar, drinks half a bottle of champagne and looks at a cheap lighter which he places in front of him on a square bit of white napkin. Next to it is a pack of rolling paper.

 

 

The women always remain the same. Blond, needy, vain, selfish – oh fuck it.

 

 

Agatha becomes pregnant. She is elated. Zero is terrified.

 

 

Dmitri is in London when the bombings first start. When they hit, he doesn’t really connect the reactions of the physical world around him with the reality he knows to be true in his head.

In short he is stunned.

Then he is running and sort of falling because when the ground is shaking you can’t really stand up, can you? It’s fucking difficult, really. And fuck it all.

Then he doesn’t really remember anything else –

 

 

Gustave wakes up, reviews accounts of the hotel – they’re suffering. Wartime means the tightening of belts and the pushing away of pleasure. Only the most dogged of people are coming.

When Gustave looks at _Boy with Apple_ he wonders if life would have been simpler if he and Zero had managed to sell it. He dreams at night of the French Riviera. He dreams at night in technicolour and bright lights and noise. When he wakes he feels that everything is in grey and the noises have been dulled. Even gunshots sound like silencers.

 

 

Dmitri wakes. He is in hospital. So is that one eyes dog-walker who had been ahead of him when it had all started.

‘Did they win?’ He asks as a nurse comes to his bedside.

‘I think they did for that little bit. But don’t worry, we’ll give it right back.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

 

 

The old one-eyed dog walker is named Maurice Topsom and he’s from Manchester but had been visiting London to see his daughter-in-law and his grandson.

‘My boy’s off fighting. Do you remember the Great War?’

‘A little.’

‘What a war that was. I thought we were all done with wars after than one. Seems we weren’t. A shame.’

‘Quite.’

‘Where you from? You sound proper foreign.’

‘A little place. Zubrowka.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘No.’

‘Where abouts is it?’

‘The alps. Western bit. Though we have ties to the east. My mother was always better with the history than I.’

‘Sure. Mothers are. You’re country been invaded yet?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Any loved ones there?’

‘My sisters. One’s in Italy, though that’s hardly safe, of course.’

‘No wife? Children?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, well. Look, lost me eye in the last war. Were you in it?’

‘No.’

Dmitri looks out of the window. The skies are grey.

 

 

Rations are set in Zubrowka. Meat and cooking oil and vegetables and linen and petrol and rubber and sugar and coffee and chocolate and bacon and butter and everything in between. There are coupons issued. The Grand Budapest is requisitioned by the government to be a hospital. Gustave shrugs and says that it’s better than it being a barracks.

 

 

The baby is born. It’s a boy to be named Mehmet Gustave Charles Mustafa. Agatha asks, Why Mehmet? Zero replies, It was my father’s name. Gustave is elated with his godson. He devotes hours to the baby’s amusement. He wishes the war would end so the boy would know only summer in his childhood.

 

 

 

France falls.

 

 

 

Further post cards and notes sent from a certain Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis to a certain Monsieur Gustave H of the Grand Budapest Hotel. 

  1.      _In hospital. I hate being in hospital. I think the fucking nurses are out to get me. Won’t let me smoke the assholes. Not all right with any of this._
  2.      _Heard the eastern front in Zubrowka is under attack. ~~Do you remember being on the eastern front –~~ I hope you and the hotel are keeping well. One damaged crenulation and I’ll be fucking furious. _
  3.      _England has the worst food in the history of countries with terrible food._
  4.      _Here is a picture of Westminster Abbey and London pre-bombings of course. I had one of the nurses fetch it for me. I visited it about four months ago. V. pretty. Scratched my name onto the back of the throne in it because I could. You would have been appalled, I think._
  5.      _The dreaded nurses allowed me to walk about the ward today. Picture on this card is of a boy by a window. He shares a resemblance to our painting, I think. Less fruity of course._



 

Some cards make it through the front. Some don’t. Dmitri writes from habit. The ones that Gustave receives he reads and saves in his journal. They are memorized. He feels he would know Dmitri’s handwriting anywhere. He hates himself for it.

 

 

Agatha coughs into her elbow, laughs at Zero. Why the worried face? You always are worried, dear. Don’t be. I love you.

‘I love you, too.’ Zero replies. Between them their young son sleeps.

 

 

Winter in war is worse than winter in normal years. Coal is rationed. Fire wood is limited. The Grand Budapest is very cold.

 

 

Dmitri sits by _Portrait of Lord Widmire_ and looks out the window. There is a light dusting but the English are acting as if it’s a large dumping of ten feet of snow. He wonders what spring wild flowers look like here. In Zubrowka they are purple and pink and yellow, mostly. With tarweed and thistles in-between. In Zubrowka he doesn’t really care about nature. Finds it a necessary nuisance. In England it’s a thought that carries through the day and keeps him awake instead of asleep because suddenly time awake is precious and feels just as rationed as the sugar supplies.

Gustave lingers by the front desk more than up in the first floor bar. He helps Zero with accounts and guests and the supply chain now necessary for a makeshift hospital. Agatha has joined the nurses because, as she explained to Zero one night, pastry chef is nice and all during the peace but this is the time to be useful and pastry chefs in war are distinctly _not_ useful.

She follows the Sister Superior around and has learned all the basics. She is excited, thinks she might take up the career after the war. Go to school, even. There’s a thought.

Gustave asks Zero, ‘do you think it’ll be an early spring?’

‘I couldn’t say M Gustave.’

‘No, I suppose not. It tends to be, at wartime, that winters last longer and springs are too short.’

 

 

 

 

.  .  .

 

.  .  . 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. To Know Spring

Gustave changes his poetry collection to the modernism in place after the Great War. For years he had ignored it, kept to his romantics and his eighteenth century poets but now he wants the shattering, splintering reality that TS Eliot and Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and GK Chesterton and oh gods – _No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells, / Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs –_  

And even then, the choirs are tired.

When he had been a young man someone had once said – We will all be home by Christmas.

No one says that now.

 

 

Agatha continues to help with the sisters. She is diligent, intelligent, kind, brave. She works with the incurables. Then men so mutilated by shells and bullets and gas and everything in between that they are hardly recognizable. Then men coughing up lungs and drowning in their own spittle as foreign diseases consume them.

Zero whispers into her skin at night – you are the bravest person I know. You are the bravest person I know and god I love you. I love you and love you and feel I should write endless reams of poetry about you and your bravery.

She replies, to still night air, then into Zero’s lips and mouth – no, no, my love. Wait until after the war. When our days are brighter and the sun actually means something to us beyond it just being the sun. When we have laughter again. Then you will write and I will laugh at your praise of me and together we will be happy. Always and forever, happy.

 

 

Gustave goes to sleep alone. There are no women, and even if there were, he doesn’t feel that this is time or the place anymore.

 

  

Dmitri goes to sleep alone. He is still in hospital – although he is about to be let out. Only two days left. He watches the ceiling. The lights going past. They remind him of the train between Lutz and Zurich. They remind him of Gustave.

 

 

When Gustave allows himself to think of the past he skips over the trip to Venice and everything afterwards. He thinks of first meeting Zero and how impressed he had been with the young man. He thinks of the death of Madame D. Of jail, even. He thinks about his time before that – the Countess of Malta, the Duchess of Parma – and even further back to when he had been a lobby boy himself.

He doesn’t think about Dmitri because that would be foolish and really, it had just been a little thing. A fling. Gustave is good at flings. Minimal attachment. Fond memory. Move on. He is very good at flings. And because he is good at them he knows he shouldn’t think about Dmitri. He also knows he has to stop the postcards, somehow. The one or two that got through. It was too much. Sweet, really. For such a seemingly unemotional man. But, truly. It would have to stop. Because if it didn’t – well, Gustave didn’t think about that.

Because he is good at flings.

 

_Oh my god I swear the wallpaper is driving me fucking mad. It’s this awful yellow colour. Who the fuck makes mustard yellow wallpaper? What the fuck is wrong with that person? Jesus Christ._

_Hope the winter isn’t too bad. Finally out of hospital. Rations on petrol are getting stricter._

_Yours &tc, _

_D. D-U-T_

This is one such example.

Gustave tucks it away in his journal. Goes to the front desk to see Zero about the day’s activities.

He is good at flings.

 

 

Gustave still sleeps in his room – the old one he had when he was still concierge of his beautiful Grand Budapest.

 

 

Dmitri has taken a room in the Ritz. Or, rather, continues to take a room in the Ritz. He hears whispers about the Marie Antoinette suite. That famous people might be using it to meet. Names are bandied about – De Gaulle, Eisenhower, Churchill. He doesn’t pay them much mind. He wishes that the snow in England was thicker and that the mountains (such as they are) were higher.

 

 

Zero hears about some things happening in Germany. Gustave tells him to ignore them. And, my dear, if things get like that here we’ll get you out. Don’t you worry. No one lays a hand on my lobby boy.

 

 

Agatha’s cough grows worse. It sounds like gravel. There is a thick yellow-green phlegm. Little Mehmet begins to cough as well.

 

 

_German Planes Raid London All Day; British Bomb Berlin, Starting Fires; Riots in Romania. Strikes are Hard._

 

 

Headlines are ignored. Gustave sits with Mehmet and watches his godson cough. Zero works harder than usual.

 

 

Sometimes, Agatha takes tea. She’ll sit at the counter in the kitchens, back straight, and drink it slowly. There is no sugar or honey or milk for it. Even the tea is low grade. But she drinks it. Slow and sure and true. Sometimes, she’ll cover her mouth and look out a window to mountain passes and fir trees and the wild expanses of Zubrowka. Sometimes, she’ll read over Gustave’s crossword puzzle or Zero’s latest poetic attempts.

One night, she tells Zero that she’s scared she’ll lose Mehmet.

‘I’ve only started to love him recently. Don’t think me cold, but before he was just a little wriggling thing. I can’t explain it Zero, my dear, my love, but I didn’t love him the way you did when he was born. He was just something my body had created and expelled. But now, now I’m beginning to love him and I am so afraid we’re going to lose him.’

‘We’re not going to lose him, Agatha.’

‘He’s coughing.’

‘Yes, but – ‘

‘Half the children in the infirmary die, Zero.’

‘But –‘

‘We’re not in a romantic poem, we can’t beat the numbers.’

‘We have before.’

She shakes her head. No, she whispers, even before, the numbers were always in our favour.

 

 

Only one letter is written in response to all of the English-sent postcards.

_Dmitri,_

_Weather here is as you would expect it to be for this time of year. It feels colder and the winter feels longer. I fear that Zubrowka will not make it out of this war in one piece. There, I’ve said it._

_Back to business as usual with Gustave._

_As you may have heard, the GBH is now a hospital, which I greatly prefer to it being a barracks. I mean, I’d rather it be neither, if I must be honest, but at least there are people and the space is being used. I could not stand the empty halls and the sullen silences knowing where all the young men were who once filled them with noise. Knowing where all the unhappy mothers and wives were who once filled them with music and dance. I couldn’t handle it. I’d be driven mad by silence._

_I am glad that you seem well. I received a telegram from your sister in Venice. She married. Then the call went out for men. Now she’s a widow. I’m sorry._

_I hate that term – I’m sorry. I feel as if I’m writing it and saying it all the time. Every other word is “sorry”. As if any of us could have done something to prevent it. There must be other ways. There must be other words to be used. Other languages to be spoken besides our dratted, useless one._

_Does English have an alternative? I hardly know anymore._

_Zero and Agatha are well, not that you asked, but I figured I’d better include it. They have a son. I don’t know if you heard that. His name is Mehmet Gustave Charles Mustafa. I am his godfather and greatly honoured for the position. I think he will be a stunning man once he is grown._

_This winter is dragging on._

_I feel like I always am with you in the winter._

_I feel that we have never known spring._

_Yours &tc._

_Gustave H._

There is a reply. It is the last postcard of the war.

_We have never known summer, either. Autumn and winter since childhood onward. Such is the fate of our sad, snow filled country. Maybe, after the war, we will see it. Maybe, after the war, we will know heat and warmth. Or something. But, I’m not holding my fucking breath._

_Dmitri._

 

 

 

_.  .  ._

 

_.  .  ._

 

 

 

 


	3. Zero

Mehmet, little Mehmet, sweet tempered, beautiful child, oh god, darling little thing, favourite of everyone – quiet, dear, blessed Mehmet dies.

 

 

Zero hears the news. He sinks to his knees behind the front desk of the Grand Budapest Hotel. He rests his forehead against the edge of the counter and begins to sob. Loud, heaving, gasping sobs. He wants to vomit. There is nothing to vomit. 

He stumbles through the halls until he finds a bathroom, throws the toilet seat up, shoves fingers down his throat. Nothing.

Right, he remembers, I didn’t eat breakfast and it’s only half ten and fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck I feel like I am burning behind my eyes and my jaw hurts and everything hurts and the tile in here is really dirty looking.

 

 

Agatha hears the news. She nods. She finishes the row of cookies she is baking then carefully undoes her apron. She hangs it up. She wipes flour from her face. Walks into the hall. Walks down it for a while. Then begins to walk faster and faster until she is running. She runs out into the show, coughing and shivering and wearing only shoes, knee socks, and an old dress. In the snow she cries. She screams. She feels as if her throat is raw. She aches. She is moaning and fists the snow until it is frigid water. She is cold and shivering. There is salvia and snot and tears down her front. She doesn’t care.

Oh god, oh god, oh god – she can’t even think beyond that. Even those words are blurred. Everything is blurred. It isn’t real. My baby isn’t dead, she thinks. How can he be dead? He is my child. I should die before him. Oh god, oh god, oh god – she begins crying again. Heaving gulps of air and tears. She shoves her frozen fist into her mouth. It doesn’t stop the sound. It will never stop the sound.

 

 

Gustave hears the news. He sits down. Finishes his drink. He looks over the railing for Zero but the concierge is gone. This makes sense. He folds a napkin in half. He unfolds it. He excuses himself and goes to his room, closes the door, sinks to the floor.

This is ridiculous, he thinks. This is ridiculous. Couldn’t it have been someone else? Couldn’t it have been something else? Something explainable. A bomb. A bullet. A solider raid. Something that makes sense. We’re in war and it’s a fucking disease. We’re in war and it’s a fucking cold.

He closes his eyes. Breaths in deep. Wonders why his cheeks are wet, thinks that there must be a leak or something and really, they’ll have to get that looked at.

 

 

Agatha follows a month later.

Zero just laughs then swallows then disappears for a week.

When he returns he isn’t the same and just says to Gustave, ‘my name is a fucking joke.’

Gustave tries to smile.

It doesn’t work.

 

 

 

.  .  .

 

.  .  .

 

 

 


	4. Childish Things

The old one-eyed man Maurice meets with Dmitri in a park near the remnants of Putney. It’s a rare sunny day and so they’re still bundled up but enjoying the weather regardless.

‘Well, we’re both missing something now.’ Maurice says.

‘I suppose.’

‘You get used to it after a while.’

Dmitri doesn’t respond. Instead, he feeds the ducks. He wonders how they have survived when so many people have not.

 

 

‘Tell me about Zubrowka.’

They’re in a pub.

‘I’ve never been to parts foreign.’

The count shrugs. It’s a vertical country, he replies. Lots of trees and snow. Hot springs. Pleasure hotels in all the nice places for holiday. Religiously ambivalent. Catholic historically. Played with Calvinism for a while. Never took off, though. Pockets of it here and there. We got the Renaissance when the rest of Europe was moving into the Enlightenment. Though after that I think we caught up quick enough.

‘Look,’ Maurcice pulls out a post card. ‘I got you one of Manchester. Here’s our cathedral. Proper big one, eh? Real nice to look at. Thought you could send it to that friend of yours back home.’

‘I wouldn’t call them a friend, exactly.’

‘Oh?’

‘He stole my inheritance and my family’s best painting.’

‘Cooee. Did he now? Well, how about that. I’d count him family if I was you.’

‘He’s fucking twee.’

‘Can’t hold that against a man.’

‘What?’

‘In these times. Take friends as you can find ‘em. Look, when you write, tell him I say hi and if he’s looking for a girl I’ve got a swell daughter named Agnes.’

‘I thought your daughter was married with a grandchild.’

‘She is. That’s Eliza you’re thinking of. Agnes isn’t. You’re not married are you?’

‘I’m not the marrying sort.’

‘Neither was I until I got married.’             

They finish their ale and went out into the night. 

 

 

Gustave has tea with Lady Malbec and, as she is a friend, goes to bed with her. There is safety in old habits. There is security in them. He knows how the night will go and how the morning will feel – it has been a long time since he has known either.

At three in the morning the former concierge finds himself awake and staring out the window. It is reminiscent of a scene he has witnessed before. When he climbs back into bed, however, there are no gruff complaints, no cursed filled whines, just the deep and steady breathing of sleep.

 

 

Dmitri takes a walk. He watches the Thames. He remembers a few lines from Shakespeare. There had been a production at the Grand Royal Theatre in Lutz many, many years ago. A fat man had stood on stage and had asked for news on the Rialto.

Venice. He watches the dark, filthy water swirl.

That fucking city. That fucking fucker of a city.

He wonders how his sister is doing. He wonders if she is married. He wonders if she is still alive. As Italy is in bed with Germany he has no way of knowing. Once a week he tries at the Red Cross, just in case, and once a week he walks off empty handed.

It has been months since letters have come in from the occupied mainland. Sometimes they do arrive, in bushels, they had been held at the boarder and there are big black marks through them covering up what has been deemed sensitive information.

Dmitri isn’t sure how useful this is. He received a letter from a distant cousin who, on a good day, might have one interesting thing to say, and half the letter was blacked out. He’s pretty sure that it’s impossible for Jan to write anything remotely sensitive. But, still, there it stands.

 

 

Dmitri dreams in colours. Greens and browns and blues and yellows. On bad nights it’s reds and oranges and blacks and greys.

When he wakes he gropes for the lamp on the bedside table. He likes the yellow light that fills the room. It reminds him of home. Wherever that is.

 

 

Zero doesn’t take a single day off. He works and works and works and there are moments when he feels as if he’s an automaton and thinks that perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Everyone is so kind to him. They are all so sorry, naturally. But god, they are being very _nice._

It makes him want to scream.

 

 

Gustave is being nice because Gustave doesn’t know how not to be nice. Anyway, this is Zero. Zero, that younger brother he once had then didn’t. Zero, that son he never had. Zero, that younger cousin whom he always wanted. Zero, really, the only family he has.

‘Your name is a Greek anomaly.’ Gustave tells him one night. They’re up on the roof in the snow. Gustave doesn’t know why. Zero doesn’t tell him.

‘What?’

‘Did you know they tried to outlaw the concept of zero.’

‘Smart people.’

‘I always thought so. But then, we wouldn’t have you and that would be terrible.’

Zero smiles a fraction. Gustave smiles in reply.

It’s a start, the older man thinks.

‘I know a poem,’ Gustave begins. Then stops. It’s been an age since he last recited a poem. He can’t remember when, actually. It might have been before Dmitri left. Before the war became as bad as it is.

‘No, go on, I want to hear it.’

‘Maybe it’s not the right time.’

‘I think it is. Agatha said that you know it’s the right time when it will both hurt and please the most.’

Gustave isn’t sure he agrees but settles into the words, regardless.

This is the first time Zero has said her name since it happened.

It is also the last, for a good long while.

 

 

Another letter itches to escape from fingertips. There is a blank sheet of paper and a pen and it’s snowing outside because it’s fucking Zubrowka and it always snows.

He wonders if his first letter made it through to London.

He has no way of knowing.

It’s odd – this necessity of writing into a void. Not knowing if the words will ever be read or will they be lost? On some desolate hilltop in the middle of the god forsaken alps.

When it was still the summer of his youth he would go sledding with his sister. They would read much and head south in the winter.

Quickly, the paper is shoved away, the pen put back in it’s holder, and he’s out the door, down the hall – Georges I need a martini right now – oh hello, Sister Superior, yes I am aware of the time of day. You look lovely, by the way. Really, truly lovely. There’s colour in your cheeks. I think we could all use a little colour in our cheeks now and again.

 

 

Not all of Dmitri’s post cards made it to Gustave.

Some remained un-writ. Others were written then burnt. Others still were written then kept for a while then burnt.

Here is a selection of unsent postcards from wartime London. They were discovered in a false bottom of a drawer in the Prince Henry VI suite of the Ritz Hotel, London.

 

_I fucking hate this country. It’s full of shitty people and shitty weather and shitty food. I can’t help but think that if you were here it’d be a margin better. If only for me to have a basis of comparison for the standards to be met by the descriptor “shitty”._

_This is a postcard from York. V. pretty town in a Medieval sort of way. Found book of poetry in hotel room whilst there. If you’re fucking haunting me, you can stop. I do that well enough in my own head without your help._

_When I remember you and the train from Zurich to Lutz I wonder if it was real or some fanciful nightmare conjured up by my clearly sick mind. But then, men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves. Come Caesar to the capital tomorrow? It’s unknown but there are whispers. Assuming, of course, that Caesar is a large, rather fat, barrel voiced Englishman._

_How can you be so happy? I have never managed happiness. Perhaps this fucking country will make Zubrowka seem like a goddamn paradise. Holy crap you have no idea._

_London is the worst cage in the long, sad history of cages._

_Fuck you. You know I hate you, right?_

Gustave pulls the lighter from the desk drawer. It sits on his desk. It feels akin to a weight on a sheet of rubber and slowly, all attention and focus slips and slides towards it.

It’s silver. Small. Useful. One of those little gentlemen’s lighters that can be palmed from here to there with barely any notice. Discreet. Generally, everything that Dmitri is not.

On it is an inscription. _With all my love, A._

Gustave has considered this a countless number of times. There are no A’s in the count’s immediate family. Perhaps extended family. The other option, that a lover of some sort, gave it him is thrown out as frankly ludicrous. Even if someone gave it to Dmitri, someone of that relation to him, the man wouldn’t have kept it so long. Not that sort of gift.

Gustave wonders where the book of poetry he gifted the younger man has ended up. Probably left on a table on purpose. Or “forgotten” in a hotel room. Maybe given away to a stranger. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t really want to know. He likes to think, in his more sentimental moments, that Dmitri still has it. Maybe he doesn’t read it, but at least he still has it. Thumbs through the pages, perhaps, thinking fondly on the former concierge and insulting him with love.

Farcical.

Gustave laughs. It’s dry.

The lighter is put away.

 

 

 

.  .  .

 

.  .  .

 

 

 


	5. Fragments Shored Against Ruin

Time passes. As time is wont to do.

 

 

Zero doesn’t count the days. He doesn’t mark them down in a journal that is tucked under his mattress. He doesn’t memorize the picture of his son. He doesn’t remember the smell of Agatha. He doesn’t focus on how her laugh would sound. How her smile would tilt and look in a certain light.

He doesn’t let thngs remind him of them. Like romantic poetry. Or the big dipper. Or peppermint bark. Or broken shoelaces. When things happen he doesn’t think ‘I’ll tell Agatha’. He doesn’t mourn in that way.

He can’t afford to.

 

 

When the paper arrives with the news of allied forces in Berlin no one is sure how to react. So they don’t. Gustave continues to be Gustave but Zero thinks there’s less love in it and more duty, now. It has become rote. He thinks that they all survive in different ways.

 

 

Things begin trickling in. Nebelsbad had spent most of the war in seclusion – letters and news infrequent. Actual news, not propaganda news, was like a diamond in the rough. It was carefully spoken and cradled with care. Now, though, things are being said.

Chuc asks Zero if he heard of these camps out east near Germany and maybe Poland? Zero says that he hadn’t. Chuc shrugs. He had heard they were horrible but wasn’t sure why.

They take their coffee to work with them. Help the nurses clear out patients.

 

 

Backed up mail arrives in bushel fulls. Everyone tears through it in a frenzy. They find missed announcements, old birthday cards, notices from loved ones within Zubrowka and without.

‘Aren’t you going to look, M Gustave?’ Zero asks. He has a stack of letter’s from Agatha’s family. He isn’t sure what he’s going to do with them.

‘No, Zero, I’m not.’

‘Why?’ 

‘Because there won’t be anything for me.’

‘I could look for you.’

‘No, thank you.’

Zero watches the older man sip his tea. He is perfectly calm. Perfectly well manicured. Occasionally he checks his watch.

 

 

At night Gustave goes through the mail. He finds two missing post cards, a birthday card from a relative, a letter from his sister. He reads them all in secret and burns them when he’s done.

 

 

There are subjects that the concierge and the former concierge had agreed to not discuss. Gustave’s past had been the first. Then it had been the war. Then it had been Agatha and Mehmet. Now it was Gustave’s unwavering silences and obsessive watch checking.

‘I think he’s waiting for some long lost lady love.’ Chuc suggests. The other staff members shake their heads. No, no, because M Gustave went to bed with Lady Charleston last night and would he do that if he was waiting for someone? No.

Zero thinks that he’s waiting for the past to catch up. For the authorities to come and impound him for theft of _Boy with Apple_ or something.

Mr Musher says that it’s something else. The past, in a manner of speaking. ‘He does this every so often. I think there’s a lady, but not his love. I think it’s his sister.’

‘He has a sister?’

‘Several.’

‘He never talks about them.’

‘No.’

 

 

One night a car arrives, late. In it is a woman. Middle aged but no one sees her face very well. She disappears with Gustave for hours and leaves in early morning hours.

He stops obsessing over his watch.

Zero catches him burning a letter. He wonders about the family. He wonders what happened.

‘We’re all dealing with deaths.’ Is what Gustave says when the younger man asks. ‘This war has been something, my dear Zero.’

 

 

The boarder opens on October 19th.

 

 

Dmitri laughs. It’s a grating, horrible sound. He doesn’t do it very often so he’s a bit rusty.

‘Of course it’s today.’ He says to Maurice. The old man blinks his one eye at the count. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘I was wondering when you’d be off. Sure you don’t want to marry my daughter?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘Ah, well. It was worth a try.’

They part amiably.

 

 

Europe is a mess. A man stops Dmitri near Grey Friars and looks at him intently. Do I know you? Dmitri shakes his head, probably not.

No, no, I feel I do. Not from this war, no. No. The man is earnest. But the last one. You, who were with me in the ships at Mylae, eh?

Dmitri just shakes his head. No, no, I think you have the wrong man. I am not Stetson.

They part shyly.

 

 

Leaving undoes people. More than death and warfare. Coming home can be as shattering as a blitz.

 

 

Japan, Chuc opens with. Did you hear about Japan? Christ almighty it’s bloody awful. 

‘I don’t like talking about this,’ Zero finally snaps. ‘Can we move on?’

 

 

A letter from a sister to a brother.

_Brother,_

 

_I hope you are weathering the war well. You have the spirit of endurance which is more than the rest of us have._

_Katherine has gone and done it. Which is smart since Alex was made to go to war ten months ago and it would have been due in seven months from now so the timing wouldn’t work. She thanks you for the money for it. I told her she should use the rest to make herself pretty. So Alex remembers why he came home, you know? Katherine was always such a simple girl. Poor thing._

_Julie tells me to tell you to come home, sometime. Maybe after the war. I tell her that you won’t._

_Mother died last winter. I don’t know if you heard. Alex said he was going to send something to you. I don’t know if he did. He had so much to do last winter and he was only home for a little while between the fighting._

_I am now the head of the household. Manager of the madhouse, as you would have put it years and years ago._

_I know you don’t like remembering us. But, my dear brother, mother is dead and we are all undone._

_I will visit you in the spring._

 

_Your loving sister._

 

Summer finally comes.

It feels like it has been winter for years.

 

 

A letter was once sent from a brother to a sister. The sister reads it as she watches the water pass by and the sun slowly arch across the sky.

_Marguerite,_

 

_Mother’s dead. Don’t know if anyone bothered to send word to you. She keeled over about three or four days ago. Something like that. Come home post-haste as funeral is next week. I’ll save you spot next to our favourite, darling sisters._

_You know they remind me of fucking vultures. Jesus Christ I can’t stand them half the goddamn time._

_Look, there’s some money in the will for you, I think. More than what father left us which should be dandy. You can travel, if you’d like. Go to America or wherever. What attracts you to that miserable country? I hear it’s terrible filled with brutes who have no culture or class. The Canadians are apparently worse._

_If you need anything let me know. I’ve enclosed train tickets. First class from Paris to Lutz. There’s a stop over in one or two pretty cities along the way so you can be inspired or something. Do you still paint?_

_Get ready for a hellhole of a funeral._

_Love,_

_Dmitri_

_PS_

_Kovac’s cat is really fucking annoying. I hate it more than I hated mother._

She folds it up and tucks it away. She doesn’t know why she keeps Dmitri’s letter’s. Perhaps it’s because they’re the only ones she ever looked forward to receiving. If only because of the some of the more creative modes of expression. She remembers a school master once being described as a “fucking toady arse backwards baboon of a grade-a cheese shovelling idiot”. Whatever that meant.

Her sisters wrote their condolences to her about her husband.

She had been too newly married to care deeply about him.

She isn’t sure what she should feel. She thinks that she should write to Dmitri. She feels he would understand – if in a curse filled, round about sort of way.

The water drifts on.

She has never hated Venice so much.

 

 

Summer comes so slowly and it’s hard for Zero to think that it has been over a year and a half since –

It’s also been nine months since the war ended. That’s an easier point to count time from.

 

 

Agatha had said that things that take time are usually worth waiting for. Summer is taking time. But when it arrives in early July, late because they’re so high in the mountains, it is the most beautiful Zero has seen in years.

There’s a carpet of wildflowers visible from the back of the Grand Budapest and they are yellow and orange so he is reminded of his home, his mother, the beauty of the desert. He is also reminded of Agatha.

Because, if he is truthful with himself, everything reminds him of Agatha.

He tells this to Gustave.

‘During the war I hadn’t allowed myself to think of her because it would have been too much.’

‘Of course, my dear Zero.’

‘But now I can and I feel that it’s still too much but I’m all right with it.’

They sit in silence on the front steps of the empty hotel. They share a bottle of chardonnay and watch the sun peak through clouds, leaving traces and memories of shadows.

 

 

It’s a year and a day since the border reopened when Dmitri walks in through the front door.

October 20th.

The bastard always knew how to make an entrance.

 

 

Gustave is at the front desk, it’s ten in the morning, he’s halfway through his second cup and they’re slowly getting visitors trickling back in. 

‘Can I get a fucking room in the place or will I have to do it myself?’

Gustave looks up. He smiles. He says of course, if he can be of service.

Dmitri is inspecting the hotel. He nods to _Boy with Apple,_ ‘pretty picture.’

‘Thank you. It’s a gift from a friend.’

‘Did you get the postcards?’

‘Four or five.’

‘Oh for _fuck’s_ sake. I sent so many more than that. What a fucking waste of time. I hate war time postal services. Fucking hell. And some of them were good!’

Gustave is still smiling. He holds out a lighter and a pack of rolling papers.

‘I assume you still smoke.’

‘Damn right. You don’t live through war time London without smoking.’

 

They end up drinking on the first floor bar and tear through the hotel’s wine selection. Gustave asks about Dmitri’s leg. Did it hurt much? No, the count replies, or I’m sure it did, but I can’t remember. 

Dmitri asks about the hotel and the missing staff, the faces that had been so familiar before the war, that had been so familiar when his mother had been alive.

‘It’s strange,’ Gustave says. ‘How insignificant all of it seems yet how monumental. I suppose that’s normal when you live through major world events that will make history. How was the rest of Europe when you travelled through it?’

‘Devastated. Terrible. A fucking wreck. Poor sods.’

Gustave watches Dmitri roll a cigarette. He admires the count’s hands. For moment it feels like the train across Italy was the present. For a moment the war was the future and just the two of them with a painting was the present.

It vanishes.

‘How long are you here for?’

‘I don’t know. Depends.’

‘You always have a room, darling.’

Dmitri blows out smoke. Looks at Gustave, side eyed, through the haze.

‘Well, we’ll have to see, then.’

Gustave nods, gives a small smile over his glass of wine.

‘Only, don’t call me darling and keep the poetry to a fucking minimum.’

The former concierge laughs.

It's been a long time coming, he thinks. A damn long time coming. 

 

 

 

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End file.
